


An Incident

by dayari



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Season 2, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Injuries/Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 17:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3257939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayari/pseuds/dayari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles gets kidnapped. Derek is not happy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Incident

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kura/gifts).



Stiles said, "This is such a phenomenally bad idea."

The hand seemed to come out of nowhere. Or maybe he just didn't see it because there was a bruise pushing up against his left eye. 

A hot, dry palm clamped around his forehead, and slammed the back of his head into the wall. Stiles cried out as pain exploded in his skull, squeezing his eyes shut against the starbursts.

"Shut up, you little shit," the werewolf growled. As if Stiles hadn't gotten the hint.

By the time he managed to blink his eyes back open and swallow down the bitter taste of bile, the guy had retreated to the front of the abandoned gas station. He parted the dusty blinds to look outside the large, dirty window. 

Stiles craned his neck to look, too, but the view was about the same as it had been the last time the 'wolf had peered outside. A bunch of brown, dried leaves, swept across the cracked pavement by the late autumn breeze. Four gas pumps, the paint chipped with age. 

And, as the beta doubtlessly saw right now, a distinct lack of Stiles' fanged, clawed cavalry.

"There's no one there, buddy," Stiles said, tiredly, and let his head drop back against the wall behind him, just to rest his aching neck.

He looked at the plaster chinks on the ceiling for a while, watching the slight waver in his vision. A faint orange glow lit the paint, cast by the lamps that periodically lined the cracked, gravel-strewn street outside. Occasionally, a car went by on the nearby highway, with a distant fading roar and a wandering patch of brighter light on the ceiling.

Stiles guessed that about half an hour had passed since he'd woken up sitting on an old, stuffing-leaking stool at the back of the large room. For the first ten minutes, through the heavy thud of the werewolf's fist in his ribs and the sharper pain of the hits to his face and head, he had felt a self-assured, warm glow of hope every time a car had gone past.

Now, that hope was barely more than a little flicker. He no longer thought that each car sounded a bit like the low purr of the Camaro, or even the distinctive pitch of his jeep. They were just passing cars, and they could as well have been on the moon for all the help they were to him.

"I'm going to give you another chance to do what we want," said the woman. She pushed away from where she'd been leaning against the dusty, gutted cash register. "Renounce Derek Hale as your alpha, agree to work as my alpha's emissary, and I won't rip your spleen out through your nostrils."

The woman stalked across the room to him. Her boots crunched on gravel and ground-up plaster. She moved slowly, her hips tilting her gait into an imposing swagger, exuding the kind of lazy authority that did not flinch from violence. She stopped barely a foot away from him, her hands open at her sides, waiting.

She was taller than the guy by the window, and Stiles had to tilt his head back to look up at her. She controlled the shift with the same kind of ease that Derek did. Her eyes glowed golden, and her nails were long and vicious-looking. But her jaw did not have that jutted-out look of being filled with fangs, and her forehead was smooth and flat.

"Okay," Stiles said. He sat up straighter, glaring up at the woman. His mouth tasted of blood and sour fear, but he swallowed down the low-level panic. "Okay, here's the thing. Number one— and I can't believe I _actually_ have to spell this out for you. Number one, _ouch_. Two, I don't know if you _noticed_ from the lack of magically engineered escape attempts, but I am _not a druid_ and I'm not the Hale pack's emissary. Three, again, ouch. Four, I kinda have to pee—"

One thing that he had never really appreciated before was how long werewolf claws were. They were so pointy and sharp that they made it impossible for a 'wolf to make a fist. It made sense in a way, though; in an open-handed, finger-curled sweep, the claws could do much more damage than a punch.

But these guys didn't actually seem to want to hurt him (much). This meant that they couldn't just claw him open, and didn't care to shift back to punch him. Instead, the woman bared her teeth, grabbed his head, and knocked his skull into the wall again.

Stiles' teeth clacked together. He bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood, but this time he made no sound besides a strangled moan. Little lights zapped past behind his squeezed-shut eyelids. His hearing grayed out into the rush of blood through his ears.

It took a moment for the pain to fade a little. The back of his head throbbed. The hair there felt gritty and possibly also sticky, and he swallowed convulsively against a wave of nausea.

The woman was still looking at him, head tilted to the side like she was watching a moderately interesting TV show. Her face was expressionless—not angry, nor frustrated—and that was what freaked him out the most.

"Well," she said, pensively, "I don't want to give you a concussion just yet. I'll have to ask again in a few minutes. After that, I'm going to start pulling off your fingernails. In case _you_ hadn't noticed, I have a pretty good set of pliers on me." And she flicked her fingers under his nose, her claws clicking together.

Stiles breathed slowly through his nose until his stomach settled. The woman strode back to the cash register. As she walked, Stiles saw her shift one hand back to human and idly examine her nails. 

A wash of faint white light streamed across the room, accompanied by the low roar of a truck on the highway. The woman's shadow twisted and moved bizarrely across the floor until the distant headlights passed by.

The shivery, watery feeling in Stiles' chest and throat felt dangerously like hopelessness.

As far as anyone knew, he was still in Oroville, at the away game with the rest of the lacrosse team. With the speed and agility of two werewolves, they had won, and after a quick shower, Stiles had gone out with Scott and Isaac and the rest of the team to celebrate. 

At the bar, he hadn't felt watched at all. He'd had a good time, though they'd all stuck to water and soda under Finstock's watchful glare. Just after midnight, the adrenaline of the game and the faint bruises he'd gotten through his padding had caught up with him. He'd taken a cab back to their motel. 

That was when the two werewolves had struck. 

Stiles still remembered the glare of headlights in the side mirror, the sudden roar of their large van's engine, far too close. They had run his cab off the road, until the wheels had careened off the gravel shoulder and they'd crashed into a lamppost.

His seatbelt had locked tight upon impact, scoring lines of dull, throbbing pain around his chest and abdomen. The deploying airbag had hit him full in the nose. His upper lip was still sticky and stiff with half-dried blood.

The last he'd seen of the driver, when the beta had ripped out his seatbelt and dragged him from the car, the man had been slumped onto his airbag, bleeding profusely from a large gash on his forehead. 

The beta had hit Stiles in the temple, a sharp, vicious jab with his knuckles. For a while, the world had fuzzed out into gray and black. Then he'd woken up in the gas station, propped up against the wall on a stool whose cushion was spilling out its moldy foam filling.

He wasn't tied up. There was no need for him to be. There was no way he could've given two werewolves the slip.

His heart hurt, his ribs ached, and the stool was really uncomfortable. A loose metal spring was digging into his left butt cheek. Perhaps, if the others took much longer to notice that he'd been kidnapped, he'd have a permanent imprint there. Not that he was vain or anything. But he knew for a fact that one Derek Hale was quite invested in the health and safety of his butt, and he'd hate for death and destruction to rain down on these two violent but unsuspecting fools just because they had sat Stiles on a broken stool.

Stiles said, "Have I mentioned how bad an idea this is?"

The man by the window twitched. Stiles shifted to get more comfortable. The spring seemed to have gotten stuck in his back pocket. 

Nobody knew where he was, and there was nothing he could do about it. His phone was still in the wrecked cab. He had no way to call for help. His brain felt like it had been mashed up a bit at the back, just like he squashed the throngs of his fork through his potatoes at Sunday lunches with his dad. 

He couldn't run. But what he could do was talk, buy himself some more time, for all the good it would do.

Stiles cleared his throat. "I actually feel sorry for you guys." He rested his head against the concrete wall again. His neck hurt from the backlash of getting shoved all the time. "Just let that sink in for a minute. I'm _feeling sorry_ for the two superpowered assholes that ran my cab off the road and kidnapped me. That's how bad this idea is."

No response. Except the werewolf by the window turned around with a mouthful of bared teeth, and took two menacing steps towards him.

"You wanna guess how much trouble you're in?" Stiles asked, watching the man carefully. His heart was hammering, but he ignored it. "You know Derek Hale, the alpha of the Beacon Hills pack that you're so intent on pissing off? He's going to shred you into tiny ribbons and pick his teeth with your bones. If I were you, I'd pack myself back into that van right now. You could make the border by morning."

With a full-throated roar, the beta launched himself towards him. Gravel spewed out under his skidding feet. His fangs gleamed in the dim light, and his eyes blazed like furious yellow coals.

A loud, menacing growl rumbled through the room. The dust on the empty shelves trembled and jumped under the low vibration. 

Suddenly, the woman was between them, and Stiles flinched away so hard that the stool creaked warningly. The beta reared back as if he had been struck, and slunk quickly back to the window.

The woman stopped growling, and turned her expressionless eyes on Stiles once more. Her hands were curled loosely at her sides. "Please," she said. "Don't try to intimidate us. It's utterly pathetic."

"Yeah?" Stiles said. His heart was going at it like a jackhammer, pounding and pounding against his breastbone. A faint cloud of dust still hung in the air, kicked up by the guy's skidding feet on his hasty retreat. "Then why is your goon over there so nervous?"

The woman's bored look sharpened into a glare. She turned slowly, and advanced on him, one dusty step at a time. "Your alpha has to be here in order for you to renounce him," she said. "Then, once your ties to your old pack are severed, we'll take you to our alpha, who will swear you in as our emissary." 

She smiled nastily at him, a too-wide stretch of lips that exposed her teeth. "Until Hale gets here, we'll just have to... work on your cooperation."

Stiles took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He, for one, was working on holding on to his anger. Anger felt good. It burned hot and reckless inside, far better than the numb, creeping panic. _Nobody knew where he was_ , he had no idea how far from civilization they were, and he was so, _so_ screwed...

"Even _if_ Derek shows up," Stiles snapped, glaring up at her, "what the _hell_ has deluded you two into thinking I'm the one you're looking for? Did you ever stop to think, in your tiny brains, about what your alpha's gonna do to you if you bring them a useless human with not an _ounce_ of magic—"

The burning amber of the woman's eyes was the only warning he got. She slapped him twice across the face, once on each cheek, her open palms leaving a burning, stinging blotchiness in their wake.

"Ow, stop!" Stiles yelled. He brought his hands up, tried to cringe away and found only the solid wall. "I am _not_ a _goddamn druid!_ "

She scoffed, looking once more vaguely bored. She wiped her hands on her jeans as if she felt dirty after touching him. "Hale will come," she said. Her voice was calm and level, unconcerned by her own violence. "He will. You reek of him. And there's no point in denying your spark, so you might as well stop. My alpha heard of how you dealt with the kanima—"

"Heard?" Stiles blurted out, jerking away from the wall in shock. " _How?_ We kept that under wraps! We kept it so tightly under wraps that at one point it ended up in a fucking corpse bag in a morgue..."

He trailed off when the woman was suddenly way too close for comfort. She loomed over him, a towering, menacing presence. Stiles could smell her—deodorant and woodsmoke, and motor oil. He sucked in shallow puffs of air, and tried to ignore how his pulse beat at the base of his throat, in his belly and palms.

"You used mountain ash," the woman informed him, ignoring his question. "Though you're a novice yet, with no training to speak of, you made an impenetrable barrier with it. That proves enough."

If she hadn't been standing so close, Stiles would have thrown his hands up in sheer frustration. At the time he'd done that, trickled mountain ash around the club and wiped the gritty, sandy residue from his hands afterward, it had seemed like a good idea. Now, he wished he never had.

"That," he said, with forced calm, "was about _belief_. Dea— the guy who gave me the ash said as much. It was just about _believing_ the barrier would hold, _anyone_ could have done it."

The woman shook her head, eyebrows raising steadily, and quirked her lips into a small, mocking smile. "That's what you'd like to think."

Stiles opened his mouth in indignation, but before he could defend himself, she spoke again. "We need an emissary," she said—dispassionate again, listing facts. "You're young, impressionable. It won't take long to... convince you that you have a place in our pack."

"I don't want to be in your pack!" Stiles shouted. He balled his hands into fists. He wanted to get up, just so he wouldn't have to keep craning his neck to look at her, but he didn't quite dare to, and that just made him angrier. "I already _have_ a pack, one whose betas don't kidnap me out of a _car wreck_ and give me fucking concussions!"

The woman backhanded him across the face, with such force that the stool rocked violently. Her claws grazed his cheek, but didn't cut. Pain shot through his abused nose again, hot and throbbing, and Stiles gasped, coughing when blood dribbled into his mouth.

His stomach roiled. He spat out the taste, blinking away the little white flecks in his vision. Shakily, he moved to wipe the back of his hand under his nose, but the woman snatched his wrist in a steely, bone-grinding grip, and leaned over him, snarling at him with a mouthful of gleaming fangs, her other hand coming for his throat—

There must have been something, a noise or a movement. As Stiles uselessly twisted his arm and kicked at the woman's shins, she suddenly went still and silent. So did the beta by the window, who had watched them with glowing eyes, growling out a low-level, almost purring noise, as if he wanted to join in.

Both of them stilled, and their heads jerked around. Stiles froze too, heart pounding, sweat sliding coldly down his back. But he heard nothing from outside, just the intermittent chirp of crickets and the sparking hum from the old street lamps.

Then Derek launched himself through the window behind the shelf.

The glass shattered inward. Derek's weight hit the cash register with a splintering crash, but his hands were clawed and ready, reaching for the man. The 'wolf spun around to meet him, and the woman let go of Stiles and vaulted over an empty display stand, roaring a challenge.

Derek gripped the snarling man by the middle with one hand, his whole palm fitting around his ribcage, and tossed him aside like a rag doll. Then he buried his claws in the woman's abdomen.

A wet, hot spatter of blood dripped to the dusty floor. She half shrieked, half roared at Derek, and gouged deep, wet furrows into his wrist. Derek slammed her into the cash register. Her head bounced off the gravel-littered table with a sickening crack. 

With a cry of fury, the other beta came at him again. Derek spun around to face him, moving so fast that his eyes became glowing streaks of red.

Stiles exhaled shakily, and squeezed his eyes shut. 

The image of the cab driver still flickered in front of him, the blood that had trickled down the airbag, the limpness of his shoulders. He was relieved—so, so _relieved_ , shivery and clammy-handed just from seeing Derek—but he didn't want to see this.

It didn't take long. Derek was an alpha, and utterly ruthless in his rage. The betas were no match for him. Rickety shelves splintered under the impact of thrown bodies. Snarls and cries of pain echoed through the large room, punctuated by wet ripping sounds and thuds.

Something crashed, and the noise stopped. With his eyes closed, Stiles couldn't see Derek, but felt his body heat, a sudden warmth against his front, before Derek grabbed his shoulders with both hands.

"Stiles," he called, urgent and commanding. " _Stiles!_ "

His voice sounded weird, Stiles thought, somewhat fuzzily. It started out as a growl and went back to normal in the middle of his name: Derek had shifted back, easy and fluid like water. The grip on his shoulders firmed painfully, and he could almost feel the moment Derek forcibly restrained himself from shaking him.

Stiles pried his eyes open. His lids seemed to stick together. Or maybe he was just bone tired, the game and the bar, the _car accident_ and the panic catching up with him. 

"Heeey," he said, though it came out hoarse and weak. He worked his jaw until it felt more capable of human speech, and tried to smile. The movement stretched the crust of blood on his lip. "Nice of you to turn up. Please don't shake me."

Derek's hands sprang away from his shoulders as if burned. Stiles felt his body start to tilt to the side. He flailed one arm out, and hissed through his teeth when the movement pulled at the sore, throbbing strip that the seatbelt of the cab had left across his torso.

"Fuck," Derek said above him, almost panicked. His grip came back, more careful this time, his hands two big patches of warmth around his upper arms. "Stiles, fuck, are you, what should I—"

"Calm down," Stiles ordered. He was fine. He _was_. He just had to wait for his head to stop spinning. 

He got a hand around Derek's wrist, and tried to squeeze, but mostly just used the reassuring firmness of bone and muscle under Derek's warm skin as something to hang on to. "Just need a minute."

Derek stopped speaking, though Stiles could almost feel him vibrate with indecision. Finally he put his other hand on Stiles' neck, where the tendons met his shoulder, and leaned over him, putting the warm bulk of his body between Stiles and the room.

Stiles swallowed hard. He gripped Derek's wrist tighter, until he felt the strong, rapid pulse. He looked at a tear in Derek's shirt, right in front of him, where a gash on his hip was healing itself, sealing shut into a pinkish line and then fading.

Somewhere, something dripped, a sticky pitter-patter on the dusty floor. Stiles breathed, and closed his eyes.

* * *

In the car, twisted around so the sticky, throbbing back of his skull could rest against the blissfully cool window, Stiles asked, "How did you find me?"

Derek glanced quickly at him. His hands were firm on the steering wheel, the leather creaking under the force of his grip. They were on the same highway that Stiles had heard from the gas station. The headlights cut a slash of brightness into the night, the hood of the Camaro eating up the strips on the tarmac.

"Scott called me," Derek said. To his credit, his voice was fairly level. "He said you hadn't gotten back to the motel and weren't answering your phone."

Stiles thought about that for a moment. His mind was sluggish now, no longer racing on adrenaline. There was probably a legitimate trail of reasons why Scott's call had led to Derek somehow finding him, but right now he couldn't make the logical leap.

Derek seemed to hear the unasked question. "I found you mostly by chance. I was going to drive up to Oroville, but just outside of Beacon Hills I smelled your blood. So I got out of the car and followed the scent to the gas station."

Stiles swept the back of his hand under his nose. It came away streaked with flakes of tacky dried blood. His stomach felt shivery and sour, clenching with a slow realization. 

If the airbag hadn't hit him in the face so hard... if he hadn't still been bleeding a little when the two werewolves had dragged him out of their van... Derek would have driven on to Oroville. And Stiles wasn't at all sure if he'd been able to find his scent there.

He kept that thought to himself. He had the distinct feeling that the steering wheel was already in danger of being crushed. No matter how dusty it got every time they drove out to the Preserve, Stiles knew that Derek loved the Camaro, and would've moped for days about claw marks in the wheel. 

Stiles shifted to get more comfortable, tilting to the side. With his head resting against the window, he dozed a little, listening to the even purr of the engine and the occasional whoosh of another car. He felt vaguely cold, but couldn't quite pinpoint why, as he was still wearing his t-shirt and a flannel shirt over that, and the night was balmy and warm.

At some point, from far away, Stiles heard the turn signal click on, and tick for several seconds before the shift of his weight on the seat indicated that Derek had taken an exit. The darkness of the highway gave way to the yellow twilight of an intersection. The Camaro idled for a moment. The glaring red of a stoplight stung Stiles' eyes, and he let his lids droop til he was squinting through his lashes.

They drove on. The road was lit by street lights now, though still mostly deserted in the dead of night. Derek was silent. He kept sneaking glances at Stiles, probably bothered by the quiet—usually Stiles would've been talking, perhaps cussing out his kidnappers and asking about Scott and perhaps even telling Derek, in a rambly, adrenaline-crashing tangent, about the game they'd won.

But his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, his thoughts slow and syrupy. His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and the Camaro's seatbelt lay right over the bruises across his torso. His whole ribs felt tender and sore. Talking seemed like far too much of an effort.

Derek slowed the car just as they drove past Beacon Hills' welcome sign. Stiles spotted a few landmarks—the big dark expanse of a grocery store parking lot, empty at night; the narrower, tree-dotted roads that forked off from the main street.

They drove past silent, dark houses, deserted street corners and playgrounds. Eventually, Stiles roused himself a little. The window had warmed unpleasantly under his head. He touched his nose again. It hurt, but didn't seem to be bleeding anymore. 

He cleared his throat. "Where are we going?"

Derek hesitated for a moment. "To your house?" he said. It sounded a bit like a question.

"No!" Stiles blurted. Shock shot through him, a sudden unpleasant jolt. He tried to sit up, but his hair had dried to the window and even just the faint pull of it hurt like fire. He winced, slumped, and flailed an arm in Derek's direction, accidentally knocking his hand quite hard into Derek's biceps. "No, I _can't_ , my father can't—"

"Okay," Derek said quickly. "Okay, okay, we're not going." 

The Camaro slowed abruptly, and Derek pulled into a random dark driveway without even signaling. Not that it mattered—the suburbs were deserted. 

He glanced at Stiles, and this time let his eyes linger. Tightness pulled at his mouth as his gaze tracked the crusted blood under Stiles' nose, the careful way Stiles was holding himself, hunched over to protect his bruised ribs. The Camaro idled, headlights reflecting off a white-painted garage door. The brightness hurt Stiles' eyes.

"The loft?" Derek said at last. 

He spoke hesitantly, as though it wasn't the safest place Stiles could think of right now, where he wouldn't have to dodge panicked and angry questions and try to calm his father down while also not passing out with exhaustion.

That seemed like a little much to fit into his mouth, though. So Stiles just said, "Yeah, yes, please," and Derek turned the car around.

* * *

It wasn't until he was folding his shirt on the bathroom counter that Stiles realized his hands were shaking.

He looked at his hands for a moment. It was puzzling how fine the movement was, faint enough that he hadn't even noticed it until now. It was just a low-level tremor that occasionally rattled into a visible shake. Nothing that gripped his whole body and made him gasp for breath like in the movies.

From the bedroom came the indistinct murmur of Derek's voice. He was updating Scott. Stiles couldn't make out individual words, but he heard the tone, placating and low. 

Scott must have been throwing a fit on the other end of the phone, his frantic worry over Stiles exploding into the kind of fear-fueled yelling that he'd most likely feel bad about as soon as he'd calmed down. Derek would talk Scott down, keep him from driving like a bat out of hell back to Beacon Hills in a hotwired car. 

The thought filled him with relief and guilt. It wasn't like Stiles begrudged Scott the chance to see that he was alright with his own eyes. But he couldn't... He hadn't been able to bear the thought of facing even his father. Neither did he want to face Scott right now.

His plaid shirt was dusty and ragged, the collar spattered with blood from his nose. Stiles wasn't sure if he'd ever want to wear it again. For now, though, he folded it neatly, on the cupboard in Derek's small, tidy bathroom. Then he began the laborious, wincing task of peeling himself out of his t-shirt.

He felt numb, detached from everything. It was hard to believe that this whole evening had even happened. One moment an enraged werewolf had been pinning him to a concrete wall in an abandoned gas station, and now he was here, what seemed like a mere blink of time later. If it had not been for the bruises, Stiles might've wondered if he had dreamed the whole night.

The t-shirt didn't come off easily. With a sharp zing of pain, the collar snagged on the back of his skull. Stiles winced, and paused like that, swaying slightly in place with sweaty-smelling fabric wrapped around his head. Then he worked his shaking fingers into the collar, and gingerly pulled it up over his face instead.

He patted carefully at his nose, but though it ached and throbbed, it didn't seem to be bleeding again. Small favors.

Then Stiles finally took a deep breath, and turned to the mirror.

He'd avoided it until now, beyond a brief, cursory glance when he'd come in. He'd half-turned towards the shower cubicle as he'd stripped his torso bare. Now, though, he made himself look.

It looked just about as bad as it felt right then. The badges of honor from the lacrosse game were there, of course, big, blurry, lightly discolored swathes down his body, mostly on the sides of his ribcage where he'd knocked into other players in their struggle for the ball.

There was a darker, sharp-edged bruise just under his sternum, though, from those few breath-taking punches to the ribs that the man had dealt out. An angry reddened stripe across his chest and abdomen where the cab's seatbelt had dug in, where no blue-purple was visible yet but it still hurt. 

And his nose, of course—probably not broken, from his careful prodding, but tender as hell. It was already swelling, a rising bruise pushing itself up against his eye. His nostrils were caked with blood, flaking streaks on his upper lip where he hadn't gotten it all off with his haphazard wiping.

And the back of his head. Stiles hadn't forgotten that. He was by now reasonably sure they hadn't quite managed to give him a concussion. But the thought of touching that raw, pulsing pain still made his stomach clench unpleasantly.

Stiles looked for a while. He braced the tremble of his hands against the sink. The coldness of the porcelain seeped into his skin. He scrutinized the discolored skin at his ribs, the one faint, dried streak of blood that he'd accidentally wiped from his nose across his jaw. It was bad, yes, but not dangerous. Nothing he couldn't hide. No open wounds beyond the capillaries that had burst in his nose and on his scalp.

There was an intake of breath from the hallway. Stiles glanced at the door, and saw Derek standing there, staring into the mirror over Stiles' shoulder with a stricken expression. He was still holding his phone. Stiles hadn't heard the moment when the murmur of his voice had stopped.

He could see the clench of Derek's abs through his shirt, the way his whole posture firmed and broadened. Derek's gaze tracked the patchy bruising, nostrils flaring to take in the stale scent of Stiles' pain and fatigue. 

Derek's fingers curled. The muscles in his jaw pulled whipcord tight. Stiles was distantly grateful that the two betas were far away. His eyes didn't glow, but in the light there was a queer, reflective gleam to them, like the alpha red was just a second away.

"Can I use your shower?" Stiles asked. His voice grated in his throat, like he'd swallowed gravel. "I'll clean up after..."

Derek was in motion before he'd finished speaking. He covered the distance in a long stride and shook his head, half-reaching out to Stiles, his hand hovering. For a second his eyes flared to gleaming life, like the thought of Stiles cleaning the shower of his own blood made him want to tear something to shreds.

Then he visibly reined it in. His shoulders rose with the deep breath he took. When he let it out, most of that smoldering fury went with it. 

He put his hand on Stiles' shoulder. Stiles sucked in a breath; the warmth and roughness of Derek's palm were a shock. Derek squeezed lightly, then slid his grip around the back of his neck, nudging him until Stiles tilted his head to the side.

"I'd like to see to your head first," Derek said. He spoke normally, perhaps a bit quieter than usual. But there was no anger in his voice, none of that sledgehammer-to-the-chest alpha command.

Stiles swallowed. He could see himself go pale in the mirror. But it had to be done. He nodded at Derek's inquisitive look, and fastened his hands more tightly around the edge of the sink.

It wasn't as painful as Stiles had feared. The antiseptic stung and burned as Derek wiped away the clotted blood with a murmur of apology. Then there was the slight scrape of gauze or cotton over the wound. His hair grew warm and damp as a bit more blood trickled out. Stiles was grateful that he couldn't see the wound. All he saw in the mirror was his own pale face, his nostrils flaring with each deliberately deep breath he took, and the occasional whiteish flash of Derek's latex gloves.

He got through it by gritting his teeth, sternly willing his stomach to settle, and planning how he would eventually tease Derek for the big, well-stocked first aid kit under his sink. Not tonight, though. Tomorrow.

It hurt less when Derek dabbed at the small cuts a few more times. Then he leaned so close that Stiles all but felt him against his bare, goosebumped back, a solid mass of heat. He inhaled deeply, pulling in the multitude of scents from Stiles' wound. He could probably smell every molecule of concrete that had touched the cuts.

Derek thoroughly wiped the back of his head, down to his neck, and Stiles realized he was cleaning off the blood that had leaked from the wound. He stood back, and dabbed at the wound one final time until he seemed satisfied. At last he put down a few new strips of gauze, and taped something rustly and plastic-smelling over the top.

There was a snap and squeak of latex as Derek took off the gloves. Derek ducked out of sight of the mirror, rustling around in the corner by the door, putting the cotton swabs and gloves into the trash can. Then he passed behind Stiles and turned on the shower, to give the ancient water heater in the basement some time to clank to life.

Stiles knew better than to touch the cuts, but he moved his head gingerly. It still hurt, but differently, This was a cleaner kind of pain, crisp and sharp, not the dull, sickening throb from before. Most importantly, it was over. He unclenched his hands. He'd held on so long that the porcelain of the sink had grown warm under his fingers.

In the end, Derek had to help him out of his jeans and underwear. A grunt slipped past Stiles' gritted teeth when he tried to bend over, and every inch of his seatbelt bruise throbbed to blood-filled life. 

Stiles saw Derek's eyes flare again, though his hands were steady as he tugged Stiles' socks off. Normally, Stiles would've cracked a joke or at least put on a leer, at Derek kneeling at his feet. But his head felt numb and empty.

There was a moment when, once Stiles was naked, Derek started to back away towards the door, and Stiles felt himself jerking towards him, as though tugged by a puppeteer's careless hand. 

A leaden, hopeless panic filled his gut. He didn't— he couldn't— Stiles' throat closed up into a hot, aching, fist-tight clench. He couldn't speak, could only stare at Derek and his retreat to the door.

Derek froze at the sudden, stumbling staccato of Stiles' pulse. His gaze raked over his face and chest, trying to identify what had spooked him.

Then understanding lit in his eyes. Derek stepped back into the room. He hesitated, about to speak, and Stiles watched him, and dread built in him at the thought of what Derek might say, or ask, into the brittle silence. 

Derek hadn't said anything, but suddenly he felt wounded, humiliated. His heart hammered against his ribs. For three awful, sinus-burning seconds, Stiles thought he was going to cry.

Some of that must've shown on his face, because at last Derek closed his mouth and didn't speak. He just gripped the hem of his shirt and rolled it between his fingers, raising his eyebrows at Stiles in a silent question. 

Heart still in his throat, Stiles nodded. He turned away towards the shower to let Derek undress in private. The shake of his hands hadn't rattled deeply, before, but now there was something in his bones, a jarred, loose feeling that turned over lazily, like a waking animal.

The water was like stepping straight into a blessedly warm, steam-filled dream. Stiles groaned when the steady stream from the shower head hit the back of his neck, with Derek's hand carefully shielding the plastic-wrapped gauze from the spray. The metal links rattled along the rod when Derek pulled the curtain shut.

Derek guided him a little further away from the water so that it streamed down over his shoulders rather than his neck. He kept a hand on Stiles to steady him. The water was hot, almost unbearably so, and it raised goosebumps down Stiles' back and thighs.

He just stood there, as steam billowed around him and the air grew hot and damp. His bones felt like a clanging bell, vibrating still. There was a bottle of shower gel in the corner, and Stiles stared at it vaguely. He wanted to scrub himself down and then just crawl into a bed, any bed. 

But the hot drum of water on his shoulders made him sluggish and dizzy. The warmth unraveled the knotted tension in his back, and loosened his neck until he felt his head would roll forward if he didn't make a conscious effort to hold it up. 

He thought he might've been swaying, but perhaps that was just his breathing, going deep in a way it hadn't ever since he'd seen the glare of too-close headlights in the cab's side mirror. 

For a moment, the slosh and dribble of water drifted far away, fading out in his ears. Stiles blinked slowly. His eyes felt like warm marbles in his head, too heavy to keep open. Almost half asleep, he turned around towards the spray, and hissed through his teeth, coming a little more awake when the water drummed against the bruises.

Derek's hand slid away from the back of his neck. He fit it around Stiles' shoulder instead, thumb hooked over his collarbone, and a cool sucking sensation spread from there, down into his chest.

"N-no," Stiles slurred, startled, and jerked away. 

He knew what that was. A little tendril of panic crept through his tiredness. He knew what that was, and he didn't want it, not now, not the floating, lightheaded feeling that came with the sudden absence of pain.

"Okay," Derek said, his voice hushed and apologetic. His grip gentled, until he was just stroking Stiles' shoulder, his hand fitted around the ball of the joint. "Okay. I'm sorry."

For a while there was nothing but the spatter and drip of water against tile. Much as he longed to stick his whole head under the spray, Stiles settled for collecting cupped handfuls of water and wiping the fine dust from his face. He peeled the blood clots out of his nostrils, and watched the little dark flecks swirl down the drain between his feet, then wiped at the thin, brief trickle of fresh blood until that stopped, too.

Derek opened the bottle of shower gel for him and squeezed some into Stiles' hand. It seemed ridiculous to wash again—he had only just showered a few hours ago, after the game—but he felt gritty, dusty, like the gas station had stuck to his skin and caked its grime under his nails.

Even with the hot water, Stiles couldn't move very well. By now, the seatbelt bruise was like a fire brand across his torso. Every time he moved his arms just so, or bent forward, the beta's punches seemed to dig into his ribcage again, a deep, pounding ache.

Stiles washed his arms and, wincing through it, his chest and belly. From behind him came the plastic snap of the bottle cap, then a slurp of more shower gel. He startled only a little when Derek's hands went on his shoulders again, cold and slippery for a moment until the soap foamed and warmed.

Derek's palms were broad and warm on his back. The gel produced a ridiculous amount of bubbles, standing up in little tufts on Stiles' shoulders and slipping slowly down his back. Derek rubbed his thumbs into the space between Stiles' shoulder blades. Stiles sighed and swayed a little at the slow yield of a tension that he hadn't even noticed was there. 

Then Derek gathered the soap suds, and rubbed them down his back. Each sweeping touch was carefully stopped just where the waistband of Stiles' boxer shorts had left a little indent at the small of his back. 

He needn't have bothered; Stiles was barely reacting to Derek's hands on him at all. A little bit of warmth stirred in him. But it was idle and far away—nothing like the hairtrigger implosion of frantic, superheated lust that Derek could usually ignite in him with just a look.

Stiles closed his eyes. He was so tired. And Derek's hands were so big and warm, and the shower gel made the slide of them so smooth and easy, the weight of his touch down the furrow of Stiles' spine. Even the vibrating, dizzy tremble in his bones seemed distant and cottony. 

For a while, Stiles almost dozed, content under the slow, gliding pressure of Derek's palms. Until Derek tipped Stiles forward and woke him up a bit more, nudging him back under the spray. Soap bubbles were rinsed away and ran down his legs, taking with them the sweat and plaster dust. 

Sudsy water swirled down the drain, dripped off Stiles' arms. Into the quiet, Derek said, "Talk to me."

Stiles opened his eyes a little, just a slit. Water clumped his lashes together. "Are they dead?"

"No," Derek replied. He didn't have to ask who Stiles meant. "I left them alive. If I'd killed them, their alpha and the rest of their pack would've come for us."

Stiles said nothing. He blinked slowly, felt water trickle down his temple. He searched for a reaction, any reaction—satisfaction, anger, or even disappointment—but found none. 

He thought of the woman's expressionless eyes, the other beta's twitchy aggression. His stomach clenched.

"I could go back and track them, though," Derek offered, a little uncertainly, like he worried that Stiles was pissed he hadn't murdered two people in his honor tonight. "I wanted to give you a chance to heal first."

That got a smile out of him. It felt weird and wooden on his face, but it was better than nothing. "So if I hadn't gotten hurt, you'd have brought a pack war down on our heads on my behalf?"

"Yeah, I would've," Derek snapped, reading the words wrong. Something ugly bled into his voice, a jagged, raw-edged roughness. "I _would have_ , Stiles. You're— they can't just—"

"Hey, hey," Stiles said, worried. The cottony thickness in his head cleared a bit. He tried to turn, but Derek wouldn't let him, kept a careful but firm hand on him. For a moment his grip tightened and clung, Derek's blunt fingertips digging uncomfortably into the meaty part of Stiles' shoulder.

Stiles reached up. Derek let him go almost at once, with a stricken little intake of breath as blood flowed back into the imprints of his fingers on Stiles' shoulder. Since Derek couldn't see his face, Stiles rolled his eyes, and caught his hand and brought it back. 

His fingers were reddened and pruny from the hot water. The angle was weird, but Stiles wrapped his fingers around Derek's hand anyway, thumb and index finger circling his wrist, strong bones and tendons and the soft place where his pulse beat rapidly. 

Derek let out a long breath that Stiles felt on the patch of plastic at the back of his head. He rubbed a callused thumb down Stiles' collarbone, and they stayed that way until the water began to run cold.

* * *

"They killed the cab driver."

Derek didn't startle at all. Perhaps he had heard the words coming, listened to the subvocal change in Stiles' breathing, or felt the subtle tension where they were pressed together.

After they'd shut off the shower, the bathroom had been like a sauna. When Derek had cracked open the door to the hallway, steam burst out in a great curling billow. Even now, half an hour later, there was still a lingering hot humidity to the air in the corridor.

Drying off had been a wincing, flinching chore. Stiles had only gotten as far as his face and chest. Then the sight of his slow movements had apparently become too much, and Derek had moved to help. 

Stiles had let him. He'd felt a little pathetic, in a faraway corner of his mind, and he knew that if he'd been only a little more awake and alert, he would have shoved him off. But Derek had carefully patted at Stiles' hair around the patch of gauze, and run the towel down his sides and thighs, mindful of the livid, reddened patch low on his hip where the seatbelt clasp had dug in.

Afterwards, he'd left briefly, ducked out of the bathroom with a squeeze of Stiles' shoulder, and came back with a hastily thrown-together pile of fresh clothes. Stiles had spotted the dangle of a drawstring, the familiar washed-out gray of Derek's favorite sweatpants. On top of the pile lay a pair of Stiles' Batman boxer shorts—just one of the various odds and ends of clothing he had left at Derek's loft over the past few months.

As hazy and breakable as he'd felt, Stiles had had half a mind to tell Derek not to bother, that he'd just put his own clothes back on. But then he'd thought that it must have been a comforting prospect for Derek too, Stiles wearing his clothes, to smell their combined scents layered on top of the freshness of the shower gel.

Stiles hadn't wanted to eat, but Derek had convinced him to try a single Ritz cracker. With a bleary glare, Stiles had choked it down, and found that, to his surprise, it settled his queasy stomach, the big muscle warming and unclenching.

He'd eaten a few more, and half of a banana when the crackers tickled out a bit of hunger. Then he'd felt sated, and blessedly free of nausea—simply full and like he could go to sleep. 

Now, though, in Derek's bed, lying on his side with the light from the hallway painting a strip of yellow on the floor, he didn't feel sleepy anymore. He felt at the same time sluggish and like a live wire.

Behind him, Derek moved slightly. His stubble scraped across the nape of Stiles' neck. "Cab driver?" Derek asked.

Stiles let out a slow breath. "I took a cab," he said. "I got tired and wanted go back to the motel, and I took a cab. Public transport in Oroville is spotty at night."

Derek said nothing. Stiles guessed that he was probably thinking very quickly, coming up with and discarding things to say almost before the thoughts had fully formed. 

Neither of them was very good at this part. Bloody and immediate revenge, they could do; rushing each other to a first aid kit or some dried wolfsbane and a lighter, too. But this strange, barren limbo in between near-death and the morning after... It wasn't something they had a lot of practice with. 

Even the physicality of it felt stifling and unfamiliar. They never got into bed like this. Usually, Derek lay down, and Stiles sprawled half on top of him, and through the night their bodies touched, overlapped and disconnected as their dreams sent their limbs sprawling, loose and sleep-warm.

Now, Derek was curled around Stiles' back, one arm under his neck and the other wrapped loosely around his chest. Derek's heat felt good under the blanket, and the weight of his arm was nice and grounding. But Stiles was acutely aware of how loud his heartbeat must've been to Derek, how he could probably feel each thud-thud of the muscle through bones and sinew.

It made him feel itchy, exposed and vulnerable, like some painful humiliation was just around the corner. Stiles wished, fervently, that he'd just fall asleep.

"Tell me," Derek said. It was almost a command, the same way he'd asked Stiles to talk to him in the shower.

But it was— good, somehow. At least it broke the stifling silence. Stiles wet his lips, and said, "Those two betas, they were in a van behind me. They ran the cab off the road, that's where I got the bloody nose. Last I saw of him, the cabbie was just... slumped over his airbag. His forehead was bleeding, like, everywhere."

His voice didn't shake. Derek hummed behind him, thoughtful. Stiles could feel his breath on the back of his neck. "Perhaps it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Head wounds always bleed more."

Stiles made a face, though Derek couldn't see it. "I know _that_ ," he said, perhaps a bit snappishly. "From very recent first-hand experience, thank you."

Logically, he knew that Derek might be right. Stiles had had no way of checking the cabbie's pulse or even looking at him long enough to see if he still breathed. It had all happened so quickly. 

One moment he'd gotten jostled around in the car as it ran off the road, headlights careening wildly over some gravel and grass, and then they'd rammed the lamp post, and the airbag had hit Stiles in the face. 

Almost before the shock of pain and impact had subsided, one of the betas—the man, he thought—had ripped his door right off the car, with a horrible groan and shriek of bending, tearing metal. Stiles had caught that single glimpse of the driver then, the trickles of blood down the airbag and the limp stillness of his body. 

Then the beta had torn out his seatbelt. He'd dragged Stiles out of the car. The rest had been fuzzy darkness, interspersed with a vague hum of movement in the back of their van, until the gas station.

But Stiles felt, with a desolate certainty, that even if the driver had really just blacked out on impact, he'd been dead by the time the betas had loaded Stiles into their van. There was no way they'd have left a human witness alive.

There had been a heavy set to the cabbie's slump, a liquid, unnatural limpness, his face turned away. There'd been a growing bald patch in his hair, half-hidden beneath a few pomade-slick strands. And Stiles had thought, with a weird, detached fondness, that the man probably spent ages painstakingly hiding that bald spot every morning, craning his neck at ridiculous angles to check the back of his head in the bathroom mirror.

"He died," Stiles said. His voice was too loud. Suddenly he felt trapped, too warm. He rolled over so fast that his shoulder knocked into Derek's chest, and Derek instantly let him go. Stiles untangled his legs from the blanket and sat up. "He was just, just working, and he fucking _died_ because I got into his cab, because I was too fucking lazy to walk."

In the powdery light from the hallway, Derek winced a little when he looked at Stiles' face. Stiles frowned impatiently, because he was sure he looked better than he had. In the bathroom he had wiped the condensation off the mirror, and his face hadn't been as pasty and drawn anymore. Even the blood around his nose was gone.

"You can't think like that," Derek said. "It was an accident, pure chance that you even went out after the game instead of back to the motel—"

Stiles laughed, and flinched at the noise because it was too high, too loud. "What, and if I'd stayed in it'd have been the motel clerk?"

Derek frowned. He had sat up too, and at some point he'd cupped his huge, warm palms around Stiles' hunched shoulders. Now he squeezed them, almost too hard. "You can't _think_ like that," he said again, more forcefully. "Which part of this is supposed to be your fault? That you were tired after a fucking _lacrosse game_ and didn't want to walk? That they grabbed you—"

His heart tripped over itself, and hammered against his ribs in a sudden jarring sprint. "Don't," Stiles croaked.

"—that they grabbed you when you were out of my territory?" Derek cut across him, relentlessly. He shook Stiles a little. The movement rattled loose some of the icy, cramped feeling in his lungs. "Or that you didn't think anything bad was going to happen, that you felt safe enough to leave by yourself?"

Stiles couldn't speak. He just gaped at Derek, wordless and open-mouthed, his pulse a sickening throb in his throat and belly. He wished Derek would just knock him unconscious or something, to end this awful night because Stiles didn't—

He didn't _do_ this. He did not flip his shit after a night like this. He didn't dissolve into careening panic in Derek Hale's bed. He dug up halves of corpses and sneaked around crime scenes, he ran through the forest with werewolves at night and trapped his murdering lizard classmate in a police car.

He'd been scared worse locked in Gerard Argent's basement, with pain exploding in his face with the man's almost casual punches, and the whine of electricity just behind him. Compared to that, compared to being offered the bite by Peter fucking Hale, this was _nothing_.

"This is nothing," Stiles rasped. "This is fucking peanuts, after all the— after the _kanima_ , this is—"

Derek's eyes flashed—not red, but with all too human anger. " _This_ ," he said slowly, with forced calm, "is you getting kidnapped and roughed up without backup, with no one knowing where the hell you were or that you were even _gone_ , until Scott got back to the motel and didn't find you. You've got half of a fucking concussion going on. Don't you dare tell me it's nothing."

Stiles stared at him. Then he said, "Fuck," and turned away, struggling to kick off the tangled sheets. His throat hurt like a hot coal, and he was helpless to stop the tears that came so suddenly, fading his vision into wet blobs of color.

Derek's hand landed on his arm. The warm clasp was tight for a moment and then deliberately loose, leaving the choice up to him. 

For a moment Stiles teetered there, half on his knees, every muscle tensed and trembling. Then a noise tore itself from his throat, a gasping, grating sob, and he slumped back. 

Two tears rolled down his cheeks. They felt too warm on his skin. He fixed his gaze on the strip of light through the door, and watched how it bled out at the edges through his blurry vision. His face felt swollen and hot with humiliation, salt burning his sinuses with each rough, shaky breath.

He clamped his teeth around the fleshy inside of his lip, and dug in until it hurt so badly that his eyes watered more just from that. But he didn't make another sound. 

Behind him, Derek said, very quietly as if he didn't really want to be saying it, "Do you want to go home?"

Stiles shook his head so quickly that the back of his skull flared with pain. A few more tears were dislodged by the movement, and he angrily scrubbed them away with his sleeve, ignoring the sharp, throbbing ache around his nose.

Derek scooted a little closer. Stiles felt the bounce of the mattress, and his preternatural body heat against his back. But save for the hand on his arm, he didn't try to touch him.

It didn't take long. It was as if, after the night he'd had, Stiles' body was just not up to the effort of prolonged crying. His breaths still didn't go in deep, there was a fist squeezing inside his chest, but the tears stopped.

The silence seemed really obvious, the kind that desperately needed to be filled before it reached a critical mass of awkwardness. Stiles sniffed back all the snot in one go, with a gross, gloopy slurp. He felt bruised from the inside, like the leaden exhaustion was a weighted thing that'd been bumping around in him.

He scrubbed the back of his hand over his hot, stinging eyes, and mumbled, "I wanna sleep."

"We can do that," Derek said immediately, almost talking over him. He backed away a little; Stiles heard the sheets rustle, and felt his heat disappear. "Do you want me to go?"

Stiles turned around and gave him his best unimpressed stare. He felt squirmy and embarrassed about his blotchy face, and glaring made it easier to meet Derek's eyes.

But Derek didn't look like he was going to laugh at him. He looked— sore, drawn, the lines around his eyes more pronounced than usual, like Stiles' pain had hurt him, too. 

It made Stiles bite back the first annoyed thing that'd wanted to tumble out of his mouth. Finally he said, more gently than he'd intended, "No, you asshole. You're gonna be my space heater."

Derek's mouth quirked in a small smile. He scooted back again to give Stiles more room. For a moment, they both busied themselves with untangling the sheets. Stiles vigorously shook up Derek's giant pillow—they never needed two, the fluffy, down-stuffed monstrosity that Mr. Hardass Alpha liked to sleep with was wide enough for both of them. 

Then Derek got up to turn off the light in the hallway. Stiles felt around for his corner of the blanket. Once he found it, he lay down, shivering at the relative coolness of the sheets, save for the twin warm spots where they'd sat. He listened to Derek's bare feet padding back to the bed, blinking slowly into the dark.

The mattress dipped when Derek got in again. Stiles' vision slowly adjusted, and he realized that the darkness was not absolute. The single bedroom window looked out on the industrial district, and the pale glow of a street lamp seeped through the thin curtains.

Derek held out an arm to him—not far, not proprietary, but enough for Stiles to get the message. 

Though the rest of his face was cast into shadow, Stiles could see his eyes, questioning and a little cautious. He'd found that werewolf eyes had a tendency to catch and reflect light even without the flash of a camera. It wasn't the bright red glow of a deliberate flare of color—just a soft, reddish shimmer that would've been invisible if not for the dark.

Stiles scooted over and rolled into the hot, solid planes of Derek's body, sighing in relief when Derek's warmth immediately bled through both of their shirts. 

He wriggled around a bit to get comfortable. His ribs ached. When he'd looked in the mirror after the shower, the sore seatbelt stripe had finally been bruising up, a purple, mottled network that spread under his skin. First he put his cheek on the pillow, but found that his bruised nose bumped painfully into the side of Derek's head. Then he placed it on Derek's chest, rubbing up against the soft fabric of his shirt. 

It was too warm there, and slightly stuffy, because his nose was clogged with snot and he had to breathe through his mouth into Derek's shirt. But he stayed anyway, because once he got a faceful of Stiles' hair, Derek let out a long breath that sounded like relief.

Derek's arm curled around his shoulders, squeezing briefly. Then he moved to put his hand between Stiles' shoulder blades, and rubbed there, a hot, rough pressure.

Stiles could hear the regular thud-thud of Derek's heartbeat. His head rose and fell slightly with Derek's breathing. Stiles sighed, and felt some of the guardedness just drain out of him, unable to sustain the tension now that he was bundled up against the solidity of Derek's body. 

He drifted through a very light slumber, just the first fuzzy stage of sleep. He was dimly aware that he was shaking—not hard, just a fine tremble along his arms and back. It was the bone-deep vibration from the bathroom, finally rattling loose. 

If Derek felt it, he said nothing about it. His only reaction was to scratch lightly up Stiles' back with blunt fingernails, raising goosebumps in the wake of the warm, tingly trails. In the faint light, breathing in Derek's warmth and the faint scent of his laundry detergent, Stiles slid off the edge and into a doze. His hearing fuzzed out until even Derek's heartbeat became a distant drumming. 

He jerked fully awake once, when a car passed by on the main street, with the same faraway roar that had measured his time at the gas station. But Derek breathed warm and damp into his hair, and pressed his cheek there for a moment, reacting to the uptick in Stiles' heartbeat.

The echo of the car faded. Derek's broad palm was still between his shoulders. It lay motionless now, a grounding weight. Stiles closed his eyes again, and followed the touch and the warmth into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally done! Obviously, I'm very nervous--posting for the first time in a new fandom and all--but also quite happy to post this story at long last. Written for [Kura](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kura/pseuds/Kura), because she is made of rainbows & awesomeness. And many many thanks to [melonbutterfly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbutterfly/pseuds/melonbutterfly) for all the encouragement <3
> 
> [Tumblr](http://derryday.tumblr.com/), if you like!


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